The Brain

A few months ago I blogged about walking outside and having a breath of fresh air. Something about that air just smelled and felt like healthy quality air. This led me to purchasing and building out air quality tests that proved nothing was dangerous in my household. The air I breath inside is within the range of particulates per million expected within an American home.

Along those lines something else happened that I thought was a bit odd. I listened to an old favorite song called "Worldwide Choppers" by Tech N9ne (YouTube link). When I heard this song come on - something was different and I couldn't quite place it. The song did not sound like I remembered and I felt like I could clearly understand the lyrics way more than I did in the past.

In this situation I just assumed it was something off with my Google Home in terms of the quality/speed it was playing. However, on the way to work the song still didn't sound as I remembered on a completely different medium for listening. On an off note, it amazes me that we've gotten to the point with Spotify that my current track can remember between devices, but that it resumes down to the same second I stopped listening on a different device.

I started researching this though and it turns out I'm not alone with this random occurrence that things sound differently than you remember. It seemed there was a huge list of different reasons why music might sound differently over time if I summarize some random search results.

• Auditory Adaption
• Changes in mood
• Memory and Nostalgia
• Exposure to new music
• Sensory Acuity
• Environmental Influence
• Expectations
• Familiarity

Now there may be some truth to some of those or maybe its just some random idea that some person on the Internet had. I do know that this occurrence isn't just one song that is from my past. It can happen with old songs and currents songs - some days I listen to music and it just sounds different. This leads to me to basically the short version that the brain is such an interesting organ. Since I'm not sure why its deciding to make music sound different to me for a song that I'm positive I remembered sounding differently.

Now each brain is entirely different and probably responsible for an endless amount of senses from feeling, chemical, mental and radiation. What I find incredibly interesting with the advent of the Internet is folks dump their experiences into a public forum in hopes that anyone or someone can corroborate their experience. Since there are some weird things people do/experience and post it online and just hope that they aren't alone.

I research my sound change in hopes that someone has a reason and instead all I find is that is normal behavior. So at the end of the day - I guess that's positive instead of an alternative.